


god is just another story that we tell

by zitzgerald



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-18
Updated: 2014-09-18
Packaged: 2018-02-17 21:42:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2324162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zitzgerald/pseuds/zitzgerald
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Are you ever scared?” Lily asked quietly. She was warm and solid against his left where she sat, not looking at him. When he followed her gaze, he saw the few pictures he had taped to the opposite wall, obscured by the darkness. One of his mother, one of the Icarus crew, one of the English countryside on a sunny day, one of Sirius. </p><p>“No,” Remus replied belatedly and realized it was true even as he said it. “I’m more afraid of us than not succeeding the mission.” </p><p> </p><p>(Or, the Sunshine AU no one ever asked for)</p>
            </blockquote>





	god is just another story that we tell

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU directly adapted from the 2007 movie 'Sunshine'. I am not a scientist and my scientist reference is not a space related scientist, so all space-science things are from the movie and the observations I have when I look out the window into the sky. 
> 
> Trigger warning for suicide and deaths that occur similarly to the movie if you have seen it. Also, lots of sadness. 
> 
> Title taken from the Ani DiFranco song 'Icarus'.

There are some things that seem so vast and infinite, they become mundane facts. People will say, _the sky is blue_ , and that will be considered a fact despite the ever-changing colors of the sky from soft pinks to stormy greys, and the science debunking the colors that aren’t really there. 

Another fact that is really just habit, is that the sun will always rise. This is untrue. Scientists long discovered that there will be a day when the sun does not rise (for it does not rise at all) and the mistakes we make in the last day will not be washed anew by another fresh sunrise. The fact is that the sun will die eventually, but the public belief has insisted that sun will keep burning and burning like an eternal flame. 

It was only a matter of time before science surpassed belief. 

\--

The crew of Icarus II had been living on the ship for a little over sixteen months, but the passage of time was slow going and stale with the recycled air that pumped through the vents. They marked time with the holidays they wished to celebrate from their own cultures, keeping track on the little calendar that hung in the kitchen where they cooked and ate their meals. 

It was, so far, sixteen months of relative calm. 

Remus was the ship’s physicist, whose sole job was to manage and detonate the payload: a stellar bomb with the mass equivalent to Manhattan Island. Remus was there to do what was previously considered impossible: to create a star within a star, setting the explosion inside the dying sun so that Earth might be saved and live to see a different apocalypse. It was the heaviest responsibility he had ever been burdened with, and was perhaps the heaviest one any human had ever shouldered. 

The weight of it pulsed against him, even as he sat in the ship’s observation room, gazing at the sun he once believed to be deathless. 

“Icarus,” he said out loud, watching the molten surface spit and lick at the surrounding darkness of space. “What percentage of the sun’s brightness am I seeing?” 

“The observation deck has been filtered to show two percent of the sun’s brightness,” a cool voice answered.

“Two percent,” mused Remus. “And what’s the maximum brightness I would be able to observe?” 

“You would be able to observe three point one percent of the sun’s brightness for approximately thirty seconds before retina destruction,” Icarus replied.

“Raise the observance filter to three percent,” Remus said, pilfering a pair of sunglasses off a nearby table. 

There were moments like this when he wanted to be immersed in the thing that had kept his planet alive for so long, the thing that had driven him over fifty five million miles to see. And even then, so far away from home and so close to the burning star, he still was not allowed to see the sun at its full capacity. It was a humbling experience, to be reminded that the sun he could blink at from the observation bench, was still only the smallest fraction of its reality. 

“Observation deck filters raising to three percent,” Icarus responded. 

The room burst with light like a revelation. 

If Remus were a religious man, he would fall to his knees and feel God bearing down on all sides. Instead he was a scientist, and basked in the blast of pure light that wrapped wholly around him. It was as divine and humbled as he could ever get. Similar to settling down in the desert and gazing up at a sky full of stars and infinity, the intensity of sun baths inspired a crescendo of overwhelming insignificance paired with being blessed. 

As the filters lowered again and the sunlight dimmed to more manageable levels, Remus felt baptized, unable to separate the science from the divinity. 

“Trying to get tan?” a voice teased from the doorway. Remus turned, blinking spots from his eyes to see Sirius, the ship’s navigator, leaning against the doorway. 

“Just enjoying the view,” Remus replied, sliding the sunglasses off his face. 

Sirius gave him a leer, “Me too.” 

Rolling his eyes, Remus managed to suppress a smile. Though they hadn’t known each other prior to mission training, over the past sixteen months it was not uncommon for the pair to spend time alone in the observation room, with only the depths of space and the watchful sun to witness them. Almost pathologically, Sirius would lick his lips whenever he saw Remus in the observation room, far more used to spending time there kissing him than gazing out at space. 

“Where you here for any reason?” Remus asked, raising an eyebrow expectantly. 

“Meeting on the flight deck,” Sirius said, jerking his head in the direction of the corridor. Nodding, Remus stood and made for the door, Sirius intercepting him before he could brush past to smooth their mouths together in a brief, firm kiss. “All that sunlight,” Sirius muttered against his jaw. “It adores you like you’re some kind of god.” 

“I’m not a god,” Remus replied, allowing one more chaste kiss before pulling away. “I’m just a person.” 

\--

The flight deck was almost full by the time they arrived. The captain, James, and co-captain, Lily, were idly chatting with the Longbottoms. Frank served as the ship’s biologist, preserving the greenhouse that flourished with planets and vegetables and well as the majority of their oxygen. Alice, the ship’s medic, was trained to be both doctor and psychologist to care after their wellbeing after the long months trapped in Icarus. 

The last person to arrive was Icarus’ communication officer, Peter, who entered with a grim expression. 

“A few hours ago I was scanning the transmissions when I heard something… strange,” Peter said without prelude. He remained standing, fidgeting now and then as he spoke. “It looks like when we flew into the dark side of Mercury, the iron of the planet acted as a kind of antenna, so my frequencies picked something.” 

“Picked up what?” James asked, brow furrowed. 

“Aliens,” Sirius suggested.

Peter shook his head, “Icarus, please play the file I instructed.” 

“Yes, Peter.” 

The crew sat in silence as the transmission played, a strange litany of sounds no one was able to discern beyond radio waves and potential whale calls. After a moment, Peter murmured for the end, still unusually solemn as he walked to the command center’s computer. 

“That,” he said seriously as he typed something. “Was the Icarus I. Their distress signal.” 

Alice sat up immediately, “ _What._ ” 

“It’s been seven years,” Sirius said in disbelief. “There’s no way it could be them.” 

“It is,” said Peter. “Maybe not alive, but --” 

“They could be alive,” Frank cut in, leaning forward. “Their oxygen is self-replenishing, and their water is recycled. It’s feasible, with the amount of supplies they were stocked with, that they could be alive.” 

“What about food?” pressed Lily. “They only had enough for three years and it’s been seven.” 

Frank shrugged. “Anything could happen.” 

“Are you suggesting cannibalism,” Sirius barked out a laugh, sounding more amused than shocked. 

“He’s not --” Alice started, only to be interrupted by her husband.

“Well, it’s not totally insane to think --” 

“ _Frank._ ” 

They all chattered over each other, debating back and forth the plausibility of the first ship’s crew still being alive after seven years abandoned in space. Theories were tossed around at a rapid pace only scientists could spew, though all were barely thought out and formed as retorts rather than hypotheses, and the table grew more chaotic until Peter, who was still typing away at the computer, called out to them. 

“Guys,” Peter’s voice came broke through the noise. “Look at this.” 

“What is it?” asked Lily, tilting over to study Peter’s screen. He waved her back a little and turned to see the rest of the crew piling behind him in a cluster. 

“Its Icarus I,” Peter answered, then addressed the ship. “Icarus, show them.” 

The wide screen at the head of the room lit up, boasting the image of Mercury as they had passed it for a moment, then zooming in smoothly to a small speck. It was Icarus I, the ship floating like an abandoned coffin in space. 

“Holy shit,” breathed Sirius. James crowded Peter instantly, peering at the dead vessel with speculative eyes. “We could reach them. If we do it carefully, we could fly straight to them.” 

“ _What_?” Lily whirled around, ponytail flying as she stared at Sirius. “No, we have a mission to complete.” 

“It’s not a bad idea,” muttered James absently, still watching the silent shell of Icarus I. 

“It is a bad idea,” Lily said to her husband. “We are here for one purpose: to deliver the payload. I want to be clear here, _Captain_ , that the sole endgame, the entire reason we are here and able to even glance at Icarus I is because we have a payload to deliver. That payload represents the lives of our entire planet and we fail to complete this, then we fail to survive. So there should be absolutely no reason that we derive from that plan by any means.” 

“Icarus I is out there,” James said bluntly, half turning to her. “It has supplies we could use.” 

“It’s also off course,” Lily argued and crossed her arms. “Not worth it when we’re fine on resources.” 

“It’s not that far off course,” Sirius cut in, moving to adjust the screen’s projection so both Icarus I and II were shown. “See, they almost made it. Whatever happened that caused their inability to complete the mission, they didn’t veer off course. We’ll pass them in about ten thousand miles regardless.” 

“Still not worth the effort,” Lily stated. 

“How about this then,” said James. “It has a stellar bomb.” 

“ _We_ have a stellar bomb,” Frank pointed out from where he had returned to the table. 

“A second bomb,” Sirius said from his spot near the screen. “That means a second chance to detonate.” 

Frank swiveled his chair to frown at him. “Are you saying we’ll fail the first time?” 

Sirius arched his eyebrows, disappearing into the fringe of his overgrown hair, far past standard military length. “I’m saying it would be nice to have a second shot in case we do.” 

“The payload isn’t a guarantee,” James cut in. “This way our odds of accomplishing the mission are greater.” 

“No,” Lily said. “They’re the same. We’ll have a second detonation, yes, but the risk of even going to Icarus I, retrieving it, and assuming that Icarus I can even still _fly_ , cancels out the success rate.” 

“Well,” said James lightly. “Let’s leave it up to the physicist.” 

Everyone’s heads swiveled in eerie unison to where Remus was propped against the wall near the doorway. At his mention, he straightened up and frowned. 

“I don’t want that kind of responsibility,” he said, gesturing to James. “You’re captain, it's your decision.” 

“When my co-captain disagrees with the decision I’m making,” said James, eyeing Lily. “I outsource. And anyway we’re scientists. We need to make this decision logically and rationally.” 

“Nice to know we’re not a democracy,” Alice muttered. 

“No, we’re not,” James said. “We’re team, but we can all agree that Remus is best qualified to make this decision since he knows the payload and can make the appropriate risk assessment.” 

Again, the physicist in question was fixed with a litany of expectant looks. He shifted, clearly uncomfortable. “I… I’ll need some time then.” 

James nodded and the meeting was adjourned with the movement. Alice and Frank walked out together, sparing Remus looks that were not unkind as they passed. Peter trailed after them, offering him an encouraging smile before disappearing down the corridor. 

Still at the table, James and Lily were debating quietly, though they had drawn closer together since the others began leaving. It wasn’t a secret they were married, but they had the good sense to maintain professional boundaries when meetings were called. Now James had collapsed into Frank’s vacated seat and was leaning toward Lily as they urgently argued, their expressions unheated but insistent. 

This left Sirius, who glanced at the couple briefly before pushing himself up and sauntering toward Remus. 

“Are you alright?” he asked in a low voice, tugging at Remus’ sleeve so they rounded the doorway into the corridor. The artificial lights were dim, but Sirius’ eyes were gleaming grey as he scrutinized at him. 

Remus shook his head, “I can’t make this decision for everyone.”

“Look it’s just calculating risk factors,” Sirius said. He started down the hall toward the simulation room and Remus followed, trailing after him as they turned corners through the labyrinth of the ship. “I’ll help you, since I’m navigation, but ultimately you’ll be able to calculate if we can even get to Icarus I and the payload without dying in the first place, plus the probability of a single bomb completing the mission successfully.” 

“Everything we do has the possibility of death,” Remus said as they entered the simulation room. “And there are no guarantees.” 

“You’re so cheery these days,” grinned Sirius as he watched Remus type on the keyboard. The screen lit up immediately and Remus wordlessly began to enter in equations, gnawing at his lip. 

“Sixteen months in a metal ship will do that,” Remus said absently, focused as the image of Icarus I appeared on the screen, surrounded by numbers and calculations. “Icarus, move us three degrees left.” 

Sirius watched as the simulator obeyed. On the screen Icarus II shifted slightly and Remus guided the simulation through the ejection of the payload with the added factor of Icarus I’s bomb. After a moment, the screen seemed to short circuit and Icarus announced, “Reliability of simulation below forty percent. There are too many variables to run simulation to completion.” 

Remus cut a glance to Sirius almost pointedly. “And how many variables are there, Icarus?”

“Infinite.” 

With their eyes still locked, Sirius gave Remus an unreadable look. “Guess we always knew that, then.” 

“I’ve run the simulation dozens of times,” Remus said, turning away to track the screen’s confused flickering. “There’s no way to see it through unless we do it. I can’t know if this bomb is going to be successful, or if we’ll need a second one. Or even if we’ll get the chance to use the second one.” 

The navigator stepped forward and contemplated the glow of the simulation. “When we took this mission we never knew if it was a sure thing. Nothing’s changed.” 

Glancing at him in the brightness of the room, Remus said, “Everything has changed.” 

“Well,” Sirius smiled. “Maybe some things. You just have to factor those in to make the most informed decision.” 

Remus turned back to where the stellar bomb was frozen mid-drop on the simulator, the electric glow of the sun nothing compared to its real luminosity. 

“Even with the most informed decision,” he murmured half to himself. “There’s no way of controlling what could happen.” 

\--

Less than an hour later they were gathered again, and this time the flight deck held considerable more anticipation. 

“Remus?” James looked at the physicist attentively. 

After a terse pause, Remus nodded, jaw set. At his acquisition, Lily let out a breath and closed her eyes. 

“This is not our mission,” she said, opening her them to look at Remus, then James. “I just want that to be clear.” 

“It is,” James nodded. 

“We’re adapting the mission,” Remus spoke up, locking eyes with Lily seriously. “This way we have a second chance. I’d rather rest humanity on two tries rather than just one.” 

Lily tilted her head. “I understand where you’re coming from, but I still think we shouldn’t be deriving from our course.”

“Think of the benefits that weigh against the risks,” Alice said brightly. 

“Just because there’s more benefits doesn’t mean they’re guaranteed,” Peter pointed out. 

James drew the attention back to himself before another argument could break out. “Either way, the decision has been made. We’re going to board Icarus I.” 

\--

Remus was falling. It was an endless drop, everything glaring and hellish around him, not the holy inches of stars but the molten lava of fire. Remus was falling and burning and even as he reached out, he wasn’t sure what he was trying to grasp, only that he was failing and screaming and --

“ _Remus._ ”

It took a few moments of blinking for his eyes to adjust to the darkness of his tiny room from the sharp light of his dream. Lily was standing over him, her auburn hair spilling over her shoulder to brush at his chest and her pale skin easily standing out in the dimness. The world was still spinning, so Remus grounded himself by picking out the details of her face, made blurred in the gloom. When he looked at her, she smiled reassuringly. 

“Nightmare?” she asked easily. Remus nodded, unable to summon his voice and fearful if he opened his mouth the terrified shrieks of his nightmare would burst out instead. 

“I dream of the sun almost exclusively these days,” Lily said as she settled on his bed without prompting. “Sometimes it’s beautiful, like a real dream should be, but other times its nightmares and all I do is burn.” 

He knew it too: there were nights when he woke up with a cry dying in his throat and the taste of ash in his mouth, but there were also nights when there was a bright light beaming, beautiful and comforting until it faded into Sirius, grinning at him like the personification of his namesake. 

“Are you ever scared?” Lily asked quietly. She was warm and solid against his left where she sat, not looking at him. When he followed her gaze, he saw the few pictures he had taped to the opposite wall, obscured by the darkness. One of his mother, one of the Icarus crew, one of the English countryside on a sunny day, one of Sirius. 

“No,” Remus replied belatedly and realized it was true even as he said it. “I’m more afraid of us than not succeeding the mission.” 

Lily turned to him questioningly, accidentally shifting the blanket underneath her so it was slightly twisted. 

“It’s almost too much power,” Remus explained as he met her inquiring stare through the thick air. “Having this bomb and being the only one who can detonate it, and that detonation being the one thing that will save the whole of earth. It’s too much. Anyone would go mad with it.” 

“I suppose that’s why you were chosen,” Lily said lightly. “Because they know that you won’t go mad.” 

Remus shook his head. “But there’s no way to know. I could go mad with power because _this_ power? It’s more than anyone on earth has ever experienced before. It’s like I have the whole of humanity in my palm and I could decide to crush it or save it. No one else has ever encountered that before but me. And the physicist of Icarus I, I suppose.” 

She hummed a little like she agreed and leaned back to study the pictures again. “You’re right, of course, that you do have all that power. But at the end of the day we all know what you would choose. The fact that you’re on this mission in the first place says that. It means you’re just as hopeful for survival as the rest of us.” 

But that wasn’t the point. Remus was hopeful; he’s optimistic despite Sirius’ teasing and the statistical evidence, because whatever the numbers said about their deaths, there were always numbers that supported their success as well. He thought they could deliver the payload and save the world. What he worried about is what that will do to him. 

The vastness of space and the depth of a tremendous responsibility have each always touched people in some way, affected them to compensate for the enormity of the situation that would nearly always destroy them. With the titanic power that Remus carried, he couldn’t help but wonder if that was the downfall of the Icarus I. The mystery of their failure snuck into the minds of everyone, serving as a reflection of their personal fears in how the mission could go wrong. For Remus, there was the mirror of the crew becoming too far reaching and greedy, the heady rush of power suffocating their humanity until...

He’s never sure how it ends, but he knew that the void of space was impassive to all of them, and they’ll always finish to silence, not the crescendo of applause mankind imagines. 

“I think you would deserve it,” Lily said quietly, coming through the darkness like a caress. He could nearly feel like brush his cheek: her kindness that was like a physical force no one could ignore. “If anyone could be trusted to do the right thing, I would choose you.” 

Its more weight, what she said, entrusting even more expectation and responsibility on him. Remus wasn’t sure why she thought he would deserve it more than anyone, why she wouldn’t choose James or Alice or even herself. People who are so open and selfless in their compassion it was as if they walked around with open palms, their own hearts bleeding in the cradle of their hands as they offered it with a smile, saying _are you alright_. He can’t help but hate it as she tried to comfort him: Lily was handing him more to dwell on. 

Remus opened his mouth to respond to her, to prove her wrong, when the ship jarred suddenly and alarms began to ring. The air turned eerie red as the light flashed, and Lily was up and running to the flight deck, Remus at her heels. 

By the time they got there, everyone else was already collected around where Sirius was navigating, the blanched, pinched look on his face made more ominous by the blaring warnings projecting on every screen.

“I had to override,” Sirius was saying in an increasingly hysterical tone. “In order to set the new trajectory to dock Icarus I. It changed our proximity to Mercury by one point one degrees. I thought I had checked everything --” 

“You forgot to reset the sun shields for the adjusted angle,” Alice said in dawning realization. “Sirius --” 

“I’m not a machine!” Sirius yelled without warning. “It was a fuck up, a human mistake!” 

“It’s alright,” James said in a steady voice. “Calm down, Sirius. There’s no hole burning through the ship, we’re all alive.” 

“Cameras have been severely damaged,” Lily said as she pulled up the screens. In addition to being co-captain, she was the engineer trained to maintain the ship. “I can’t adjust the working ones to get a good angle on the situation, so…” 

She trailed off hesitantly, fingers hovering over the keyboard. 

“Lily?” James prompted. 

“The only way to assess the damage is to go out there and check,” she said finally. 

James straightened and squared his shoulders with authoritative ease. “Fine. That’s a two person job. I’ll be going, obviously, since I’m captain --” 

“I’ll go as well,” Lily said immediately. 

“You’re second in command,” James replied. “You need to be on Icarus, just in case.” 

“Just in case,” repeated Lily incredulously. “ _James_.”

“I’m going,” Sirius cut in. No one stepped in to argue, or even stirred in surprise. Lily fumed in her seat, putting her back to all of them as she glowered at the malfunctioning screens. 

Remus swallowed dryly, but stayed silent. 

\--

It took ten minutes to finish suiting the pair up. Remus and Alice assisted while Lily remained on the flight deck to manually prepare the ship with the others. Once Alice had helped him step into his space suit, James pressed the communicator at his ear and looked up at the nearby camera. 

“Didn’t want to come give me a good luck kiss?” he said, clearly speaking to Lily as she watched the monitors. 

“I’d have to outsource that decision,” Lily responded dryly in the microphone. Grinning at the camera, James blew her a kiss. 

“Put your helmet on before I open the door and leave you to the vacuum of space.”

“My wife,” James said cheerily as Alice lifted the helmet over his head. “She says the sweetest things.” 

Nearby, Sirius was grinning as well, half paying attention to James as he waggled his eyebrows at Remus. The physicist lifted his eyebrows in return, unimpressed. 

“I hope you aren’t expecting a sentiment,” Remus told him, pushing past his trepidation. It was only a spacewalk, something they had done dozens of times in training simulations. 

“Maybe a public display of affection,” replied Sirius. 

“Maybe,” Remus agreed, adjusting the bulky suit but going no further. Sirius pouted. 

“I could die in the endless expanse of space,” he informed Remus. “You could regret this.” 

“Doubtful,” Remus hummed, reaching for the helmet. He paused and tilted his head. “Maybe you and James could kiss each other for luck.” 

Sirius glanced over to where his best friend was already fully suited but looking back through the slim rectangle that served as an eye slit. Even from inside the mass of the helmet, it was evident James was making a suggestive face. 

“So serious our captain is,” Alice lamented teasingly as she prodded him. There was a muffled chuckling from James. 

“Icarus in position, ready for spacewalk,” Lily’s voice came over the speakers, feigning coolness though it was still clear she despised having to stay behind. 

Remus lowered the helmet over Sirius’ head to lock into place, catching a wink from the other man before his face was obscured. He hadn’t thought much about their relationship, despite all the furtive groping they managed to do in various corners of the ship. But it almost felt like the mission wasn’t his real life, that Remus was just in some kind of limbo state hanging in the air with Sirius, undefined and surreal. Early on he resolved not to worry about it while they were on Icarus and to leave it off until they were home again, but Remus still found himself thinking about Sirius far more than anticipated, imagining what Sirius would look like lounging against his kitchen counter or what his own flat in Beijing was like. If Remus was being very honest with himself, the visuals were getting harder to suppress. 

“Icarus, I’m turning on manual controls,” Lily announced. 

“Affirmative. Manual controls activated.” 

Alice and Remus cleared the EVA room and slid the airlock door closed, watching through the window as James and Sirius idled in their bulky suits. 

“I’ll be rotating the ship thirty degrees out of the sun to give them more shade,” Lily said. 

“If you do that, the communication towers will be damaged,” said Peter, blanching as the blueprints on the screen shifted. 

“We lost communication range a week ago,” Frank said. 

“We’ll need them on the way back.” 

“And that’s a bridge we’ll cross when we come to it,” Lily finished, flipping a few switches without bothering to look back at the two. “Boys, the door’s opening.” 

From the EVA door, Alice and Remus waited until James and Sirius had floated outside and cleared the entrance before heading back to the flight deck, joining where Lily and Frank were monitoring their progress. Peter hung back, scowling darkly. 

“Take your time,” Lily murmured, voice coming over smoothly in their ears. 

“Icarus, adjust sunshields to new position,” Remus said, leaning over Frank’s shoulder to peer at the computer. 

“Affirmative. Adjusting sunshields,” Icarus repeated. “Warning. Comm towers two and four will be damaged with new position.” 

“Keep new position,” Lily commanded as Peter grimaced. “Let them be damaged.” 

Icarus obeyed, and the ship moved steadily to shadow the two figures hovering outside.

“Hydraulics are burnt out,” James said. “Lily are you seeing this?” 

“Fixable,” Lily diagnosed. She examined the feed from the suit’s cameras and almost revealed a small smile. “You just need to close them manually.” 

“Affirmative,” James teased in a mock robotic voice. “Closing hydraulics.” 

“Shut up, idiot,” muttered Lily, unable to keep the affection from her voice. 

The pair outside worked like that for several minutes, trading banter back and forth over the comm link as they slid one shield closed after another. Lily watched them carefully, alternating between the screen that held their vitals and the camera showing their work. Except for Sirius and James’ running commentary, there was mostly silence on the flight deck until they were just over halfway done. 

Then, just as before, alarms broke the calm and threw them into instant confusion. 

“Wait,” Frank sprang up from his seat to grab the screen that was now glowing angry red. “O2 levels are depleting rapidly.” 

“Manual control override. Computer control returning,” Icarus said distantly. 

Lily’s knuckles whitened as she clenched at the edge of the control center, eyes widening fearfully. “No! Icarus override computer control to manual. Do not go back to automatic computer control.” 

“Negative,” Icarus replied. The computer’s tone was a cool as ever, but it sliced through their panic cruelly. “Mission jeopardized, overriding manual flight controls. Fire in sector four.” 

“The greenhouse,” Frank cried, ripping from the monitor and running out the room. Alice leapt up to streak after him, both of their footsteps lost as Lily and Remus simultaneously shouted at Icarus. 

“Enable fire guard perimeter,” Remus said, taking Frank’s place at the control center. “Icarus, shut down sections six and five in sector four.” 

“Do not return to computer control, Icarus!” Lily yelled over him. The screens were beginning to fill with blazing fire as their resources scorched. Frank ran through each monitor as he attempted to reach the greenhouse with Alice only a second behind as they heard her call out to him, begging him to stop. On the main screens Sirius and James were still working, their faces perspiring thickly from their proximity to the sun. Another monitor revealed Lily’s pleas were going unheard: the ship was moving back into the sunlight, taking Sirius and James with it. 

“Emergency override 3559!” Lily exploded, absolutely livid. “Icarus return to manual control!” 

“Emergency override in standby,” Icarus responded. “Second permission needed.” 

“Override seconded,” Remus said immediately, still trying to contain the fire as it tore through the greenhouse. Over the speakers, Frank’s shouts were heard in the background as he demanded the containment doors to be opened, Alice pleading with him to come back. Both went ignored.

“Emergency override 3559 implemented,” Icarus said. “Returning to manual control.” 

“No,” Peter said suddenly, still fixed at the back of the flight deck where he stared at the chaos exploding through the monitors. “We need to go back to the original positioning or we’ll damage the ship even more. The sunlight broke through into the greenhouse and now we might have lost all of our oxygen and food. Not to mention the communication towers --” 

“James and Sirius are out there!” Remus broke away to stare at him in shock. “They’ll die if we let return to them to the sun’s direct sight!” 

“Captain,” Peter said in a steady voice as he ignored Remus. Only the sweating at his forehead betrayed him. “Back me up.” 

“He’s right,” James said. His face was wet from the exertion of pushing the shields down and the heat, but his tone was sober and his eyes were untroubled. 

“No!” Lily yelled immediately, frantically trying to turn the ship back. “James --” 

“Icarus, return to computer controls,” commanded James in a clear voice. His captain’s voice. 

“Affirmative, captain. Returning to computer controls. Overriding to original positioning.” 

Remus surged for the microphone and twisted it in his hands. The fear was coming in bursts as he began to panic, all control slipping away. “Sirius you two have to get out of there right now before the sunshields start up.”

“We’re not finished yet,” Sirius answered, speaking for the first time. 

The fire in the greenhouse continued to rage alongside Frank’s bawling. By now he was pounding on the glass with unrestrained desperation, each plea only met with the lick of more flames on the other side. Alice tugged at him, trying to get him away. 

“Abort mission,” Lily commanded, voice unraveling and breaking completely. “Now.” 

“Just a couple more,” James told her gently. “It’s alright.” 

“Sirius --” Remus cut himself off, watching agape at the familiar profile the suit’s camera provided. Sirius was set with a little reckless smile, the light of the sun starting to illuminate his eyes as it appeared like it was merely coming out from behind a cloud. Unbidden, the image of Sirius stretching in the early morning with Remus’ sheets pooling around him, glimmered in his mind and Remus could do nothing to ignore it. Perhaps waiting until they got home would be too late. Perhaps he should have said something sooner, wrapping a strand of Sirius’ hair around his finger and asking, _Are you just doing this with me because you were bored?_

Behind them, Peter shifted minutely. 

“Sun shields at seventy nine percent,” Icarus informed them. 

Frank was bellowing, the greenhouse engulfed in violent flames. He had fallen to his knees with the despair of a dying man, the life draining out of him as his livelihood crumbled into ash. His wails was like a faint soundtrack for those on the flight deck enraptured by the two figures still hovering outside, and he went entirely unanswered. 

“James,” Lily’s voice cracked. 

“The payload is the priority,” said James, pushing another sun shield closed. “It outweighs the safety of the crew.” 

“Get out of there,” Remus said, unable to look away from the cameras that showed Sirius and James’ figures moving slowly in the darkness. It appeared almost serene, the way they moved languidly in the vacuum of space, unhurried even as the ship trembled in disorder. The sun was emerging rapidly, already gleaming on nearly the entirety of the sunshields that would kill them if they didn’t move out of the way. 

“Sunshields at eighty five percent.” 

“Sirius, head back to the airlock,” James said evenly. 

“Shut up,” Sirius responded immediately, pushing on a shield. Remus felt his throat close up. Sirius had never valued his life above anyone else’s and it seemed impossible especially now that he would leave his best friend behind. But their deaths were certain at this point; the probability had increased exponentially and Remus did not need the numbers or calculations to tell him what he was about to lose. Just as sure as the sun would burn them up, Sirius would not leave James to die. “I’m not leaving you.” 

In the camera they saw James smile ruefully but he did not stop working. “I’m not telling you to leave me, I’m telling you to head back. There’s only one more left.” 

“James --” Sirius stood his ground, unable to abandon him even as the sun bore down on them threateningly.

“I’m ordering you to head back. I can take care of the rest. I’ll be just a second after you.” 

Unable to breathe, Remus watched Sirius’ prone figure stay put and avoided glancing at the monitor that held his expression directly, sure that whatever was there would fracture Remus entirely. 

“Promise you’ll be behind me,” demanded Sirius. Remus took a breath, trying to will all his emotions away to avoid hoping or despairing in equal measures. 

“I promise,” returned James, keeping the same even voice. Belatedly, Remus realized it was resigned. It was a lie. 

“Sun shields at ninety six percent.” 

James reached out and gave Sirius a little push to get him going, the second figure floating almost reluctantly to the airlock as the first remained, only one shield left to lower. 

“Fuck,” Remus swore softly. The sun was blazing like a sentient beast, reflecting spectacularly off the gold of their suits and the shine of the ship. Remus was torn between watching Sirius make it to safety and James as he lowered the last shield. 

“That’s it, come back now,” Lily begged the moment the shield locked into place. She was a concerning shade of pale.

It was already too late. The lone astronaut turned to face the fire of the star, trapped between it and the reflection. In the cameras James’ expression was set and soaking, and the light filtered through his visor to dawn a golden rectangle on his brown skin like a sanctification. 

“ _James_!” Sirius was already bellowing, practically shorting out the microphone even as the frequency began roaring as it overheated. The anguish of it struck Remus and his hand moved of its own volition, closing the airlock to trap Sirius inside. At the command center Lily was silent and openly crying as she unblinkingly watched the sun’s heat lap closer to James, dangerous and hungry. 

Amongst Sirius’ increasingly hysterical screams as he pounded desperately on the airlock window, Lily let out a broken whisper, “Please.” 

On another screen, Frank had collapsed against the glass walls of the smoldering greenhouse, everything black and unmoving. Alice sat across from him, her back against the glass as she tilted her chin up, closing her eyes to listen to the others across the comm links. 

“James,” she said softly, voice smooth over Sirius’ shrieks. “What does it look like?” 

James kept his eyes open, watching the almighty shine as it erupted around him, and let out a bark of laughter, “It’s the second most beautiful shade of red I’ve ever seen.” 

Then he was drowning in the fire, and his howls of pain mingled so similarly to the piercing screams Sirius and Lily let out it was almost as if all three were feeling it as one person, burning up in the star until nothing was left but the deafening silence of equilibrium being restored. 

“Sun shields at one hundred percent.”

\--

The next fifteen hours were spent in the most oppressive silence the ship had seen in the past sixteen months. The crew broke off, devastation creating overpowering barriers between each other until the isolation within the ship reflected its isolation in space. 

The greenhouse was unsalvageable, every inch of it charred into useless ash with Frank sitting among it brokenly as if his own life had been incinerated with the plants. Alice was there, murmuring to him in an attempt to get him away from the graveyard, but her pleas fell on deaf ears and Frank continued to wallow numbly. 

Lily retreated to Alice’s abandoned medical center, unable to find any comfort in the bunk she shared with James. Through one of the monitors Remus watched her lie down on the cold, clean floor of the simulator room as projections of the forest played on a loop from one of Alice’s relaxation simulations. Every ten minutes the same stag flitted through the trees and Lily would break out into fresh tears, nearly silent but for the muffled sobs she smothered almost violently with her hand. 

The cameras showed Peter was in his own bunk, merely sitting and staring at nothing as he clutched at a picture in his hand. It was of the entire crew, taken the day they left Earth, with all of them standing happily together, James at the center as he looped an arm around Lily. 

Remaining on the flight deck Remus let them be and choose instead to keep an eye on them from the cameras. It was the observation deck he watched the most, where Sirius sat without moving for an eerie amount of time, merely staring numbly at the sun. For nearly three hours Remus watched him through the camera, his concern growing with each passing minute Sirius spent merely staring. He had never been so still before and Remus was beginning to wonder if Sirius had managed to die sitting up with his eyes open and blinking. 

By the fifth hour Remus’ eyes were sore from the displays. With everyone else detached and the navigator nearly comatose in the observation room, he privately elected himself to keep an eye on everything even as Icarus ran automatically without him. It was at least something to do while the misery of James’ death threatened to overflow inside him.

“Icarus,” he said aloud, breaking the silence that was beginning to suffocate him. On the screen, Lily was still on the ground, tears tracking down the sides of her face to pool on the floor. 

“Waiting for request,” Icarus’ simulated voice broke through his reverie when he did not continue. 

He had wanted to ask about James, if Icarus knew, as it knew everything, how long it took him to die between feeling the scorch of the sun and stopping of his heart. He wanted to ask if James’ nerves had burnt quickly so he wouldn’t feel the pain as he died. He wanted to ask if it had hurt, if James had suffered greatly even though he was the one who deserved to the least. 

But the morbid questions would not rise off his tongue and past his mouth, and Remus remained quiet, watching his friends grieve. 

Something flickered and drew Remus’ attention. It was the observation room, growing brighter and brighter at a steady pace as Sirius, who had moved up off the bench to press his hand against the glass as if to touch the sun itself, continued to stare unblinkingly. 

Cursing, Remus shot out of his chair and ran for the observation room, pushing to get there before Sirius could do anything drastic. At his arrival he keyed in the code and immediately lowered the filter with rushed fingers. 

The sun faded into the usual cool, molten vision at two percent. 

Sirius turned from where he stood at the front of the room, fingertips still pressed against the glass like a child at the aquarium. He blinked mildly and for a horrible moment, Remus thought he had blinded himself. Recognition registered distantly in Sirius’ expression, however, and Remus let out a shaky breath. 

“Don’t do this,” he said before Sirius could turn away. “He wouldn’t want it.” 

“That’s funny,” Sirius said hoarsely. “Because he doesn’t want anything. He’s dead.” 

Remus stepped forward several paces as if his physical proximity could break Sirius from his trance. There was a blankness in his expression as he turned back to the window that reminded Remus of a moth drawn to the flame of the sun, forever transfixed with the thing that would kill him thoughtlessly. It was not what Remus had expected from Sirius, who was always overly energetic and dramatic that his current stillness was entirely unnerving. He was half waiting for the tipping point where Sirius would suddenly snap and starting yelling and destroying things. Instead, Sirius barely moved and the energy that normally vibrated through him had disappeared. 

“Well then,” said Remus. “ _I_ don’t want it. And I’m still here, alive, telling you to come get some sleep with me.” 

“We’re all just stardust,” Sirius said absently, like he was remembering something. It was as if he were already a ghost. 

He was right, that they were all just the remnants of distant stars, all of them living shadows the way Sirius was acting now. But telling themselves they were stardust did not do anything to alleviate the fear and mortality that faced them. Stars flickered, and eventually they would all do the same: blinking out inconsequentially among a sea of others. 

Looking at Sirius, Remus had never felt so small and so large at the same time. 

“Come take a nap,” he said again, softer. He reached out and tugged at Sirius’ hand. “Please, Sirius.” 

Something must have broken through because Sirius turned his head to look at Remus, really seeing for the first time since he entered the room. He allowed Remus to grasp his hand and tug him forward for a brief kiss. When Remus opened his eyes, Sirius’ were still closed and tears beginning to leak from them as he stood there wordlessly, seeing something in the space behind his eyelids. 

Remus observed him for a moment, unable to do anything to help and finally guiding him forward to lead him to bed. 

In his bunk, as Remus watched Sirius keep his eyes firmly shut, neither sleeping nor talking, he wondered about the innumerable feelings he had experienced just in that day. He could define them easily: the panic of mortality, the grief for James, the empathy for his friends, the concern for Sirius. Vast emotions that seemed as endless as the universe itself, but still easily identified. But there was no use in those names when the enormity still demanded to be felt, and the cavernous cosmos kept spreading inside him, tremendous and raw. 

\--

“O2 levels are too low,” Frank said in a dull voice. Across the table where they all gathered, he pushed a paper containing the calculations. “Too much was lost in the fire. We won’t make it to the drop point.” 

Lily snatched up the paper to stare it. “How much do we have left?” 

“Enough for three people,” replied Frank. He barely reacted to his announcement, and the bags under his eyes were dark evidence of his sleeplessness. There was too much to mourn for him: both the loss of James and his beloved greenhouse took their toll. Soot still covered his hands. 

“Are you saying two people have to die?” Peter demanded, taking the paper from Lily. 

Frank blinked, looking entirely expressionless. “Yes.” 

Lily pressed her lips into a thin line, contemplating. From his seat nearby Sirius focused on her, looking more alert than he had since the day before. 

“We’ll be going to Icarus I then,” Sirius voiced aloud, reading the thoughts off her face easily. They met eyes and something unreadable passed between them that even Remus couldn’t decipher, only imagining it was something shared that losing James had given them. 

“They could have oxygen reserves,” Alice agreed, attempting to keep the spirits up even as weariness started to drain her. She lifted a smile toward her husband. “And food to help us restore what we lost in the fire.” 

“We can be there in a couple hours,” Sirius heaved upward to sit at the control center and began typing away. “Icarus, we’re going to keep the new route.” 

“Affirmative.” 

“It’ll be interesting at least,” Peter added, biting at his nails and glancing around the room. “To finally know what happened to Icarus I.” 

The reminder of the unsolved mystery quieted an already shushed room as each crew member dwelled on the potential causes of failure. What weighed on their minds most heavily was what would happen if the mistake that doomed Icarus I would happen to them as well. They could easily be repeating history without even knowing it. 

After what could be considered an awkward pause, the group dispersed once more. Peter wordlessly sat himself down in the seat next to Sirius, helping him recheck the course to fly directly to Icarus I. Frank immediately got up and left the room, Alice watching him with sad eyes for a beat before following. Lily left as well, after blinking away from a trance she had fallen into, staring at the smooth metal of the table without seeing it. 

Remus, unable to stand the turmoil of being conscious anymore and willing to risk the nightmares, left to go to his bunk and to sleep, hoping for oblivion. 

\--

The silence on the ship was an unbearable wall, thickening the air so that none of the occupants could stand to breathe without feeling choked. Every inhale was an agony that reminded them of their lost captain, and even as the oxygen thinned, they still felt the weight of the mourning cluster around them. 

No one did much but sit, but there wasn’t enough oxygen to do much of anything else anyway. The best and worst part about sorrow is that it requires nothing but a body and mind to draw pain from, filling the self with excruciating misery until there was nothing to do but buckle under it. They could very well run out of oxygen, and still have their hearts aching as they are until the very end. Now more than ever it was apparent that what they said was true: the void of space had no sympathy for the lives that swam through it, and its indifference was mirrored in the void of grief, which was as unfathomable and far reaching as the universe itself. 

Luckily, the crew had only a few hours to stew with their thoughts. 

“Guys,” Peter’s voice came over the communication channels. “We reached Icarus I.” 

\--

Lily stayed behind with Frank, Alice carefully telling her he shouldn’t be left alone.

Icarus II was built off the same model of Icarus I, with adjustments made to accommodate theories of what failed the first mission. Consequentially, the Icarus I hallways were somehow familiar but the lingering cloud of death prickled over the four as they picked their way through. 

“Everything seems to be in working order,” Alice said in awe. She had wandered into the kitchen area, so like their own she could easily imagine the crew sitting there, joking over meals. Opening a cabinet, she was surprised at her discovery. “There’s even still a bit of food left.” 

“Computer servers are damaged,” Sirius said from the control room. He kicked where wires were spewing out in a tangled mass. “ _Extensively damaged_.” 

“Guys,” Peter’s breathless voice came, caught in an incredulous laugh. “The garden is still alive.” 

From Icarus II, Frank leaned forward eagerly, drinking in the sight Peter’s camera allowed him. On the first ship, the others were rushing as well, meeting Peter in the doorway to see the overgrown vegetation that thrived like an oasis. Unchecked, the greenhouse had flourished into a full-fledged ecosystem stuffed with surprising life. 

“Oh my god,” Alice laughed out loud, clear and happy. “Frank, it’s beautiful.” 

“All that O2,” he murmured in reverence. Vigor sprang in his eyes as he watched the image on the screen. “ _Shit_.” 

“Remus?” Lily called out over the communicator. 

He knew what she was asking and had cut a direct path to the payload upon first boarding Icarus I. 

“The payload is undamaged,” he said, feeling the good fortune of their discoveries lifting the fog James’ death casted. There was no suitable way to make up for James’ sacrifice, but aboard Icarus I with the resources to keep alive, it seemed as if the terrible misfortunes were over. They would make it. 

“Resources and an extra payload,” Sirius gave a bark of laughter. “Guess we’re not bound to crash and burn after all.” 

The tension of the last twenty hours dissipated slightly as they continued to explore the abandoned ship. Alice dutifully stayed to identify the types of plants still growing freely, chatting over the comm link with Frank about transporting them. Peter wandered, his footsteps leading him back up to the flight deck to see if anything could be salvaged or repaired. Remus was heading back to the payload with half the intent to just _stare_ it gratefully, a benevolent gift from the past made by the sacrifices of the Icarus I crew and James. 

He was halfway there when Sirius’ voice floated in his ear. “Guys, I found the crew. Observation room.” 

It was a burial ground. What were once the bodies of the Icarus I crew were now remains so charred and seared, some corpses were indistinguishable from the others. They lay in an awful blackened lump together, singed into near ash. 

“It looks like the filters are completely gone,” Sirius said, tapping into the keyboard. Alice was kneeling down with a mournful expression, her fingers hovering over a body as if to reach out and touch it but unable to. “They’ve been destroyed completely.”

“They died of exposure to the sun’s full potential,” said Remus, incapable of tearing his eyes away. He watched the tremble of Alice’s fingers outstretched and wondered absurdly if they would still be hot if she touched them. 

“We could die of it too,” Peter said from behind the bench, keeping away from the mass of bodies. He nodded to the window where Icarus II was completely blocking the view. “If Icarus II weren’t there right now, there’d be nothing between us and the sun.” 

“Fuck.” The other three looked up to stare out the window in unison, the proximity of their deaths hushing them. 

There was a moment of silence that could only be described as having the air of a funeral. A deafening quiet overtook the crew as they stared out the window at their ship, their own massacred reflections dead at their feet. When death occurs the confrontation of it is split into the mourning of the dead and the immediacy of one’s own mortality. Death hung like a thick smoke, perfuming the air so densely it could be touched if any one of them would reach out to grasp it. But like Alice hovering over the bodies, none of them truly desired to seize the ultimate unknown, for all that they were eager to explore it in among stars. 

They had dedicated their lives to the mission, because when humanity felt the coldness of the sun’s dying retreat, they reached out with brittle fingers to grasp the immortality back, grappling desperately. With survival so intimately ingrained into human instinct, it seemed impossible to imagine what ran through James’ mind as he openly waited for death to greet him. 

No one stirred and to an outsider it would possibly appear as if the scientists were praying. Though to what in the absence of god, it could not be exactly determined. Even in science there remained an unseeable force that continued on without consideration of lives, though it seemed silly to implore to such nature when it ignored the imploring. 

Then the ship jerked violently and the four crew members were unbalanced momentarily, breaking out of their thoughts. 

“Airlock connection damaged,” Icarus’ voice floated across the comm link as if lightly informing them of the weather. 

“Fuck,” Sirius swore as the crew ran from the observation deck to the airlock. From behind the EVA door they could see the airlock that connected the ships, wrecked and somehow destroyed since they last entered. 

“How the hell --” 

“I don’t know,” Lily cut Sirius off as she checked the stats on her screen. “But it’s badly damaged and I can’t reconnect them.” 

“We’re stranded?” Peter said in a high, fearful voice. 

“We can still get back,” Sirius said, leaping over to the wall like a madman. He yanked at the suit attached to it and looked up at his colleagues, steel determination set over his features as he held the single space suit. “Or one of us will at least.” 

Immediately he began to lug the suit over to where Remus stood helplessly in the middle, Alice hurrying over to assist as they pushed Remus to step inside.

“No!” Peter exclaimed suddenly. An ugly look twisted his features as he stood, somehow taller than his normal posture affected, and more menacing despite his trembling. “I won’t be left here to die!” 

“You’re the communication officer on a ship with no communication,” Sirius argued loudly. “Remus is the physicist and a high priority officer --” 

“He doesn’t deserve the suit more than me!” Peter yelled, throwing a shaking, accusatory finger in Remus’ direction. “Just because we have different career paths -- and you’re in love with him! I don’t deserve to die because you decided!”

“No one’s going to die,” Sirius said, voice edged with aggressive resolve. He spared Peter another withering glare before moving purposefully to the wall again. Mercilessly, he began to rip at the insulation. “We’re going to wrap ourselves the best we can. It’ll protect us.” 

Frantically, Remus tried to make eye contact with him, opening his mouth to say what a dangerous, ridiculous thing this was, but Alice was securing the helmet over his head before he could manage to voice his thoughts. Now trapped, Remus could only watch through the thin rectangular window as the others viciously shredded the walls. 

Sirius turned and grinned at him through the suit, looking reckless and easy and so wonderful Remus ached to tear off the helmet and just kiss him. It wasn’t fair that Remus would be safe inside while Sirius tore apart insulation like a child playing dress up. The whole plan was ludicrous, which was explained only by the fact it was Sirius’ to begin with. 

“Just aim forward,” Sirius stepped closer, voice faraway and muffled from outside. Through the small opening he smiled again and kissed the glass quickly, entertaining Remus’ vision with the press of his lips and making his own itch in return. Peter’s accusatory voice echoed in his head, _you’re in love with him_.

“Don’t let go of me,” Remus instructed, trying to sound as brave as he knew he should be. 

Sirius beamed at him, no less bright through the grime on the glass. “Never.” 

“Sirius its twenty meters if we can line it up close enough,” Lily said urgently through the microphone, breaking the moment. 

“In negative two hundred and seventy three degrees Celsius,” added Frank. 

“The vacuum will pull us toward you. We can make it,” Sirius said defiantly. He moved away from Remus and shoved thick strips into Peter’s arms harshly, looking him in the eye. “Because no one is being left here to die.” 

“One person is,” Alice spoke up, her calm, clear voice cutting through the tension. From his seat Frank sat up and felt his skin prickle in trepidation. “Someone has to manually open and close the gate.” 

“No,” Frank said before she could finish. “Alice --” 

“Someone has to do it,” Alice repeated firmly over his protest. She finished securing Remus’ suit and smiled benevolently at the three men with her. “You can all make do without me.” 

“We’re going to need a psychiatrist,” Lily tried, voice laced with fear as she clutched at the edge of the monitor as if she could physically pluck Alice away from the damaged airlock and into the safety of the ship. “Alice, please.” 

“No it’s alright,” Alice said, going over to Sirius secure the insulation around his torso. She gave him a private look, purposely not glancing at where Peter was frantically trying to cover his self. Sirius gazed back at her, holding the moment carefully and preserving her fearless, understanding smile as she directed it to him. “I understand what needs to be done.” 

On Icarus II, Frank shook in his seat and Lily’s own hand trembled when she reached over to clasp his. Alice walked out of the airlock and stood just behind the doorway. 

“Alice…” 

“Goodbye, love,” murmured Alice. The airlock shuttered closed and Alice pressed the EVA button. 

It was instant chaos. The depths of space appear stoic and void but the moment the airlock opened, Remus was shooting forward with Peter and Sirius clenching him on either side. He could barely see enough to aim for Icarus II, all the air forcing itself around him like heavy wind. Desperately, he tried to tighten his grip on the other two through his suit but could do nothing except watch as they hurtled toward the bright light of Icarus II’s sanctuary. 

They were nearly there when a piece of debris appeared and Peter, unable to steer his self, smacked into it directly. As he broke apart from Remus, they both yelled and spun apart with the force. Off course and slipping, the leftover pair spun toward Icarus II’s opening and reached it crookedly. Sirius shouted as he hit the side instead, losing his grip on Remus and falling away into space. 

Yelling unintelligibly, Remus clung onto the edge of the opening and reached for Sirius, using his momentum to fling him into the ship’s safety before squinting over in the direction Peter had gone. 

Distantly, Icarus said in a cool tone, “Crew detected in airlock. Airlock closing” 

Lily was bellowing in his ear, “Remus! We have to close it! Is everyone alright?” 

Frantic, Remus adjusted his grip on the ship’s edge and tried to see out through the slit he was afforded. Several yards away was Peter, already half frozen as he continued to rapidly drift further away. He appeared to be yelling but Remus could not hear him or reach him, could barely make out the panicked, fearful expression freezing on his face as space enveloped him in its depths. Sparing one last look, Remus blinked away and launched into the mouth of the ship. 

“Icarus close the gate!” Frank hollered as he and Lily pounded on the connecting door. “Unlock the door!” 

The ship obeyed his command and the pair collapsed into the airlock, immediately stripping the icy insulation from Sirius, who shivered uncontrollably from the cold. As they were methodically wrapping him in blankets, Lily turned to where Remus was watching the scene through his helmet. 

“Are you alright?” she demanded, still tense with fear. 

Remus felt detached and far away as Sirius gave several trembling blinks, the dust of the glass separating them and making him feel as if he weren’t really there but merely observing, unable to help any of them. 

“I’m fine,” he said, swallowing thickly. At the sound of his muffled voice, Sirius glanced over and grinned shakily, the pull of his cheeks too stiff to fully accommodate the stretch. 

\--

“Alice?” Frank’s brittle voice came thinly through the speakers from where she stood in the observation room. “Alice… we have to leave now.” 

She smiled, taking in the decayed remains of Icarus I. Her entire life she’d dreamed of it, had wondered what it would be like to lead the charge in what was the ultimate show of human’s ambition for survival. Now the darkness of Icarus I did not frighten her, just as the darkness of space never frightened her. 

“I love you,” Frank murmured, sounding far away and right next to her at the same time. Her hand hovered over the melted bodies she was unable to touch before. Now she didn’t hesitate to flatten her palm against a corpse, the ash smearing her hand and she wondered who the person was, if they were a medical doctor like her or a biologist like Frank. 

“I love you too,” she said, granting permission and forgiveness in one breath. She remained kneeling on the floor, almost holding hands with the ghostly corpses of the crew that came before her. There was solstice in knowing that she was still somehow not alone and that in a moment, as Icarus II slowly moved away from the window, she would experience what James saw in his final moments. 

As Icarus II floated safely away, Alice kept her eyes wide and the sun leaked into the room, filling it at full blast with what she had waited her life to see. 

The sun, unshielded and pure, welcomed her.

\--

The flight deck felt cavernous with the absence of the dead. 

The remaining four members of Icarus II sat around the table that once housed seven. There was a long silence before anyone spoke, a kind of quiet that could not be found on earth but only in the emptiness of space. The mechanical noises of the ship had long since faded in their hearing so that now, with the grief of death clouding the room, the absence of noise was vast and suffocating as space itself. 

Finally, when the tears stopped threatening to fall from his eyes, Frank looked up. “The O2 is still low, only sustainable for three people.” 

Lily closed her eyes briefly as if trying to escape from his words. “What do you suggest?” she asked quietly. 

He simply looked at her, his stare telling. 

“You can’t suggest one of us volunteer suicide,” Lily trained her voice to remain level and empty. 

“I’m suggesting exactly that. For the rest of us to survive,” Frank swallowed thickly and his expression twisted into something almost cruel. “Just like Alice sacrificed herself.” 

“Frank,” Lily said quietly, leaning forward to cup her hand over his. “You’re in shock. We’re all grieving right now and we can’t make that kind of decision when we’re in this kind of emotional state.” 

“I’d point out that this is exactly the kind of emotional state people make that kind of decision in,” Frank said bitterly, his voice cold in the air. He yanked his hand away. “But our psychologist is dead.” 

“James is dead,” Sirius said combatively from his space across the table. His eyes held a hatred at the words. “Peter is dead too. You think you’re the only one who’s lost someone? _Three_ of us --” 

“My wife!” roared Frank, springing up violently. He couldn’t finish his sentence before Sirius was jumping up as well, shouting back, “Lily’s husband! My best friends! Who do you think you are that --” 

“Calm down both of you!” Lily commanded over them. The hard expression on her face was only marred by the mist of tears threatening to bleed from the corner of her eyes. “We’ll figure something out!” 

“There’s nothing to figure out!” Frank retorted, breathing heavily. “We’re running out of oxygen and we’ll all die unless someone decides to save the rest.” 

“We’ll do nothing for now,” said Lily firmly, looking around at all of them. “As captain of this ship I’m telling you we’ll wait and try to think of another solution. Let’s take a break and reconvene on this in a few hours. A lot has happened and we need processing time before we do anything drastic. Not to mention there’s the matter of how the airlock decoupled since Icarus reports no signs of doing it automatically. We can focus on that for now.” 

Frank stormed out of the room without another word, his footsteps clanging down the metal floor toward the burnt out green room. At his departure Lily raised her eyebrows at Remus and Sirius, the latter of which raised his hands defensively even as he glowered without a target. 

“We can think of another way to survive with the oxygen,” Lily said, more to herself than the other two. She shook her head and looked imploringly at them. “We have to.” 

“James and Alice already gave up their lives for us,” Sirius said darkly. “They would have died than see us all fail.” 

“If it comes down to it,” Lily’s tone was muted. “I’ll be the one.” 

“Lily --” 

“You said it yourself,” Lily interrupted. “Remus is the high priority. As long as he lives to detonate the payload, then we’ll have succeeded. There’s nothing back on Earth for me anyway.” 

“There’s nothing back on Earth for any of us,” Remus spoke faintly for the first time, the only one still seated. “That’s why we were all chosen.” 

Lily smiled at him sadly and moved toward the door, pausing only to reach up and press a kiss to Sirius’ temple and whisper, “He wanted us to protect each other anyway.” 

When her footsteps faded away, Sirius collapsed into the chair next to Remus, looking exhausted and upset. The ship’s lights had dimmed considerably with the damage and the effect made him look greyer and more worn where once vitality insisted past the long voyage they had traveled. It was perhaps the most distressing sign of their situation to Remus, as he had learned to count on Sirius’ boundless energy for the last sixteen months. 

“You must still be cold,” Remus muttered, frowning at the unusual paleness of Sirius’ skin. 

“Nah,” he grinned in return, tugging at the sleeve of the thick sweater he was wearing. It was a familiar soft green. “I’m wearing your sweater, so I’m good.” 

Remus wrinkled his nose to mask the panging ache reacting in his chest. “When did you steal that?” 

“About a week ago,” Sirius said with a wink. “You have a lousy account of your possessions you know.” 

“Well,” he could think of nothing to say to that and settled for needlessly adjusting the collar of it to settle properly over Sirius’ collarbone. “As long as you’re warming up again.” 

“I’m quite warm, yes,” Sirius murmured, moving forward with a glint in his eye. His skin, as it neared Remus’, still gave off a cool air, so Remus resolved to melt every bit of his body heat into Sirius as their lips met. 

This could be his sacrifice, Remus decided as he tugged Sirius forward to settle more closely. If no one would let him die for them, he could at the very least donate all his warmth to Sirius, who expended so much of it on a normal basis it was impossible to imagine him without it. Successfully depositing the payload would be useless if humanity went on surviving without Sirius. It was perhaps Remus’ most selfish thought, a rare one that he allowed himself in consideration of all he had done to be in this moment, kissing Sirius slow and warm on the ship that would save the world. 

“You’re not going to die,” Sirius mumbled against Remus’ mouth. 

His fingers twisted in his own sweater before Remus dipped under it to get at Sirius’ cold skin. “Neither are you,” he insisted, pressing heated palms against his ribcage. 

Sirius looked at him with such sadness Remus felt a part of him break from it. He pushed his hands more stubbornly, gliding under the sweater to seek more untouched skin so he may pour his body heat and belief into Sirius until he was alright again. 

“You’re not going to die,” Remus said, louder. “No else is. We’ll figure out the oxygen and deliver the gift of life to the sun. And we’ll all get to go home, maybe less happy, but alive.” 

“Look at you being optimistic,” Sirius said between kissing him with the curve of his smile. “What happened to the statistical probability of our deaths?” 

“Maybe I just won’t detonate the bomb unless you’re still here,” Remus muttered, letting Sirius kiss the wrinkle between his brows. 

At his words Sirius pulled back to look at him with his own small frown. “You would never do that, Remus,” he said. “You’d do anything to save the people back home.” 

“I don’t know them,” Remus said, if only to indulge in his selfishness for a moment. He clung to Sirius’ waist a little tighter, pinching the skin between his palms. “I know you. You’re here. And Lily and Frank. Everyone I know is on this ship. Or what’s left of them.”

“You’re remarkable,” murmured Sirius. There was a brief moment as if they were in the sun room staring at the blazing star, where his expression was both pained and in awe before he closed his eyes and rested his forehead against Remus’. “You’re going to save everyone, Remus, and then you’ll have an entire planet to know when you get back.” 

“I don’t want that responsibility,” Remus sighed, feeling the brush of Sirius’ dry lips against his with every word they spoke. “I just wanted to be a physicist. I wanted to help save the sun, not be the sole hero in front of a trail of corpses.” 

Sirius smoothed back the fringe of his neat hair and kissed his temple lovingly, almost similar to the way Lily had done to him earlier. Being a hero did not seem worth the loss that came attached to it. To be the savior was a price Remus was not prepared to meet, having committed so many years of his life to this mission and thinking it would be enough. It was never enough, he knew now, feeling Sirius’ breath move against his cheek and remembering the unwavering figure of James being swallowed whole by the light. Just as kissing Sirius was never enough, or sharing moments with Lily or James or Peter would never be enough. Just as humanity, when faced with its own morality in the wake of a dying sun, had proclaimed its life span not enough. 

Icarus had flown toward the sun because the freedom of flying in the safe middle was not enough; not after being imprisoned for so long and the taste of air and sunlight had intoxicated such greed in him that he died by it. They thought it would be a beautiful irony, to name the ship after Icarus when its mission was to save the sun instead of die by it, but Remus felt now as if it were a horrible tragedy instead, one they were meant to live out with no ocean to catch their fall. 

He kissed Sirius again; it was the only thing he could do. 

“Get to the greenhouse right now,” Lily’s startled voice echoed over them from the ship’s speakers, the loud tension of it breaking through the soft moment. Her urgency was so great that Remus and Sirius immediately sprang apart and dashed out of the room, running at full speed around corners to the damaged section of the ship that once held their greenhouse. 

At one of the heavy steel doors that sectioned off the corridor leading to the seared greenery, Lily was pale and distraught once more. The moment she sighted them she keyed in the code for the door to slide open, revealing the smoking husk inside, framed by pristine glass walls. 

Everything was black and thoroughly scorched, so devastatingly wasted and dark it almost seemed part of space itself, with only the thick smell of smoke to distinguish it. What was once a calming haven of green life amongst their metal prison of a ship, was now completely desecrated into a morgue of ash. Their small piece of Eden, a complete wasteland. 

In the middle, as if sitting serenely in the void, was Frank’s prone body. His olive skin was like a beacon inside the charred room, and the river of blood that pooled out of his opened wrists seemed like the only life left inside. 

“Frank,” Remus whispered, feeling numb with the weight of too much grief. The bleeding corpse was the only color in the room, and so his stare was transfixed upon it, unable to look away from the gore which stood out so starkly against the black. 

“He killed himself. One of Alice’s scalpels,” Lily said hoarsely. Her eyes were rimmed red now, and the veneer of professionalism had rubbed away almost entirely until all that was left was her raw despair and fear. “I came to check on him and --”

“He sacrificed himself,” Sirius said dully, eyes on the closed expression of Frank’s still face. Upon closer inspection his body appeared to be propped up against a piece of blackened debris. 

“Not for us,” said Lily. “For Alice.” 

“Well we have enough oxygen to survive now,” Remus said painfully. The desire to succeed the mission was becoming excruciating as the price for saving the sun rocketed higher and higher, demanding more lives. 

The three stood there and stared at the figure in the room until gently, Lily reached over and let the door slide closed on what was now a graveyard. 

\--

In a hollow voice Lily had said, “We should do a final inspection,” and the remaining crew members of Icarus II drifted away from each other to fulfill their obligations. Remus was checking the stellar bomb when the familiar mechanical voice filled the air and said, “Warning. You are dying. All crew are dying.” 

“We know, Icarus,” Remus said, feeling defeated. “But it’s alright. As long as we have enough to reach the delivery point, it’s okay.” 

It was almost tender when Icarus replied, “Warning. All crew will die before reaching the delivery point. Oxygen levels are too low for all crew to survive.” 

He looked up and frowned to the thinned air. “No, we should have enough oxygen for three crew members to survive. Frank was certain of it.” 

“Affirmative,” Icarus said. “Three crew members could potentially survive on depleted oxygen until the delivery point.” 

“There’s only three crew members left,” Remus pointed out. His hands began to grow cold as he spoke. “Lily, Sirius, and I.” 

“Negative,” Icarus said, and Remus felt the coldness explode all over his nerves with the word. “Four crew members are aboard.” 

“Icarus,” whispered Remus fearfully. “Who is the fourth crew member?” 

“Unknown.” 

He let a pause slip before carefully speaking again.

“Where is the fourth crew member?” 

“In the observation room.” 

He was sprinting through the hallways before he could even think, a thousand thoughts churning rapidly through his mind in a roaring hurricane until he skidded to a stop at the observation room’s door. There was a quiet second where his mind just stopped, and Remus opened the door before he could find the fear not to. 

The observation room was blinding. The deck was brimming with sunlight from the lowered sun shields and Remus had to throw up a hand to block out the brightness. The force of the sun at such a luminosity seemed to be thunderingly loud, the over stimulation making him seem both deaf and blind at once. 

Still, Remus stumbled forward, wondering if he was imagining the heat that stained his skin and what percentage of brightness he was witnessing. With a squint, he could make out a figure standing in the middle of the room, arms open wide to the window that blazed with fire. He could barely make out the details of the person, but the body was marred and powerful in such a manner it stuck a chord deep in Remus’ mind. Months of studying his video logs during training, having to watch the captain of Icarus I speak slowly into the camera until the feed ran out as preparation for their journey. James in particular had watched the videos endlessly, determined to find a hint of understanding about what happened to their predecessors. He used to play them all the time until the rest of the crew knew the deliberate voice and intense expression by heart. 

“Riddle,” he breathed. The impossibility of his presence was almost transcendent, and Remus felt stricken with the sudden godly faith that leaped in his chest where it never had before. Even with the enormity of their mission, science had never stretched so far in Remus’ mind that Riddle’s presence now could be a possibility. Louder, he called out, “Riddle!” 

The lone figure turned marginally, moving slowly as if burdened by the weight of immense importance. “Have you come for me?” 

Remus tried to focus on him, blinking the overpowering sunlight from his eyes. “How did you come aboard? How did you survive?” 

He couldn’t see the line of his mouth, but Remus could tell Riddle was frowning. 

“You have not come to serve me,” Riddle said, voice deep and slow. Concerned, Remus wondered how deeply his mind was affected from the seven years of solitude. His eyes began to adjust minutely to the light and revealed why the line of Riddle’s body was so strange: he was deeply burned on every inch of his skin. 

“We can help you,” Remus called back. He continued to step inside the room, feeling the searing of his retinas until he had to close his watering eyes completely for a moment. “You’re safe now.” 

“Safe,” Riddle repeated in a gravelly tone. He was looking fully at Remus now, the disgust evident in the shadow of his expression. “There is no safety unless I allow it. I alone possess control, and I alone am in command.” 

This halted Remus’ procession across the room, by now he was able to see more of the horrifying disfigurement of Riddle’s scarring, and the burn in his eyes seemed more scorching than the sun itself. Sirius’ description of Icarus I’s mainframe, the deliberate severing of wires, whispered itself in the back of Remus’ overworked mind. The failure of Icarus I had not been an accidental malfunction or mysterious break. It had been Riddle. 

“You sabotaged Icarus I,” Remus said in realization. Several conclusions fell into place all at once. The terrible psychosis Riddle was displaying was not a result from a seven year solitude, but rather an increase in what was already a horrifying mind. Riddle had internalized the massive responsibility of the mission terribly, and manifested a god complex that lead him to sabotage his ship and kill his crew. 

Remus understood it with sharp clarity, the fate of the entire planet in his fingertips, waiting on his action alone as if he were a god to be prayed to and fearful of. 

“I am part of the sun,” Riddle said now, arms stretching again as if to soak the rays further into his damaged body. “I am as divine touched as a god, with the decision of whether they live or die in my hands alone.” 

“Not anymore,” Remus said, no longer friendly. “Your mission failed so they sent us. You no longer hold anyone’s fate but your own, Riddle. Did you think you could command death on an entire planet like that? We’re not _gods_ , we’re humans, that’s the whole point of the story.” 

He could see it now. Icarus’ failing was his mortality as much as it was his inability to stop. Only gods can touch the sun, but humans will never stop inventing new ways to try, scrabbling for that extra inch of life but always meeting death in the end. 

Riddle’s face twisted horrifyingly, the cracked skin cracking further from where the exposed burns were caked on like some ancient, bestial thing. He let out a vengeful roar and struck forward, quicker than the blisters should have allowed. With a gasp, Remus felt his chest open up under the slice and too late, saw the glimpse of the surgical knife in Riddle’s hand. 

Throwing his arm up defensively and staggering back, Remus tried to deflect the swipes Riddle was throwing ceaselessly at him as the sun blinded him almost entirely. It was a turbulent moment that seemed to last for far too long as Remus stumbled toward the door, earning shallow cuts on his forearms to match the deeper one on his chest. 

Snarling inhumanly, Riddle followed, slashing to kill even as Remus tripped out of the observation room and scrambled down the length of the hallway, Riddle screeching unintelligibly behind him. The first door Remus caught sight of was the EVA suit room and he didn’t hesitate before bellowing, “Icarus open the EVA door!” 

It slid open obediently and Remus barely heard the obligatory, “EVA door open,” before flinging himself inside and bodily slamming the door closed as Riddle skidded against it. 

Remus watched in horror as Riddle gave a terrible shriek, eyes flying wide open. He pounded on the door briefly before stopping entirely. Without breaking eye contact with Remus, Riddle reached for the manual safety lock. 

“No!” 

But Riddle had already implemented the safety, trapping Remus inside the room. 

“No one will have more power than me,” Riddle said in a low, threatening promise. 

It wasn’t until Riddle began to walk away, leaving him to bleed out in the EVA room did Remus remember Sirius and Lily didn’t know about the fourth passenger. 

\--

“Warning, you do not have authority to remove the mainframe panels from the coolant.” 

“Warning, mainframe panels removed from coolant.” 

“Warning, you do not have authority.” 

“I cannot identity your biometric signs. Please identify yourself.” 

“Warning, mainframe panels removed.” 

Warning…” 

\--

The lights in Icarus began to dim and shut off. When she called out to Icarus for an explanation, the computer remained silent. It was unusual, after over a year of ready responses, to have nothing to speak to. Lily resolutely pushed the thought away as her mind already began to supply a stream of _James would have’s_.

Instead she swung her legs out of the bed -- Sirius’, since he wasn’t using it anyway and she couldn’t bear to lie down with the ghosts just yet -- and padded out into the corridor. Everything was black and metallic and only after a second of listening did Lily realize there was not even the background noise of the ship’s groaning and mechanically whirring. She couldn’t help but draw the comparison of all the animals having abandoned ship in anticipation of the storm. 

She cut through the silence swiftly, purposely dragging her feet a bit to create more noise and turning the flashlight she’d pilfered from Sirius’ room on every corner. What she was searching for, she wasn’t sure, but there was the hanging mystery in the air that prickled at her neck so she felt a bit like Nancy Drew, a small girl poking around and armed with only a flashlight and a keen mind. 

Her feet automatically turned her in the direction of the flight deck, since it was the core of their operation and would surely give her answers. Her engineer’s ear strained for any sounds of the ship’s mechanics, but they were all as still as corpses so she ran through the litany of potential problems in her mind to keep her busy until she reached the flight deck. 

It was empty but Lily wasn’t too surprised. She crouched under the main computers and began to toy with the wires there, attempting to manually reboot the systems. There was an electronic humming noise and the soft glow of the screens waking made Lily pop her head back up. The camera feeds lit up across the board, showing her mostly dark hallways and rooms and a single crackling one, powered by a separate grid. Inside the EVA room was a pacing figure she easily recognized. 

Lily leaned over the computer, her unraveled hair pooling against the keyboard as she booted up the comm link. 

“Remus?” 

At the faint sound his name, Remus whirled around in the airlock, looking into the camera imploringly. “Lily?” 

Lily spoke a little louder, “In the suit, Remus. Get the comm link there.” 

She watched as he whirled to the suit behind him, digging inside to rip the comm link out. 

“Riddle’s on the ship,” Remus said immediately when he had the microphone, turning urgent eyes up to the camera again. “He’s crazy, Lily, he thinks he’s like a god or something.” 

“He must have sabotaged the mainframe,” Lily replied and smothered the flare of instant panic that sparked at Remus’ words. Instead she typed swiftly, drawing up the status of the coolants which blared red in warning. “ _Shit_. The mainframe panels are out of the coolants, I need to go fix them.” 

She began running while she spoke, barreling to where the coolants were. The ship was her baby, the thing she had helped build and protect for years now. That it was somehow damaged invoked a striking, unexpected maternal chord and losing it would be nearly as painful as losing James. The warnings were confirmed the moment she entered: all four mainframe panels were entirely out of their coolant tanks. 

“Shit,” she swore again, sprinting to the control panel. 

“What’s going on?” Remus demanded over the comm link, faint and demanding in her ear. 

Wire belched out of an opening and Lily said, “The computer is down, the mainframes have to be lowered manually.” 

“What?” Remus called back over the crackling comm system. Lily barely paid attention, already spinning to face the nearest coolant. “Repeat, Lily. What’s wrong?” 

“We’re going to burn out,” Lily said, and dropped her comm link on the ground. 

Remus was shouting for her again but she was already lowering herself into the tank, the chill of it so cold it seared her instantly. Still she continued, dunking herself entirely to get at the lowering mechanism underneath. 

\--

Sirius stumbled down the dark hallway, trying to guide his way by sliding his hand against the wall. Sixteen months on the ship was more than enough time to memorize the blueprint of Icarus, so he knew he was near the mouth of sector four.

“Icarus?” he called out, having received no response the first few times he did so. “Anyone? What’s going on?” 

Silence met him. Unused to being ignored or left alone, Sirius felt a twist of annoyance and unease mingling together as he continued to wander in the direction of the flight deck. He was passing the opening that lead down the sector four and the greenhouse when something slammed into him roughly and Sirius was thrown against the wall. 

“Fuck!” he yelped, the telling ache of bruises blooming over the right half of his body. He tried to look up to identify his attacker, but the ship was too dark and the figure looked like a nightmarish sketch come to life, all jagged edges and obscure shadows. “What the fuck --” 

Sirius loudly swore as the figure started forward for him again, and he leaped away so his attacker hit the wall instead. Skidding down the hall, Sirius began to shout as he craned his neck to see if he could recognize the shadow that chased him, “Icarus? What’s happening? Icarus! Respond!” 

It was too dark to see the stranger’s face, and the build of them made Sirius sure it wasn’t Remus or Lily. 

“This better not be fucking aliens,” Sirius muttered. He careened around a corner, glancing around for a weapon or somewhere to hide. There was nothing, so Sirius resolutely skidded to a stop and whirled around to stand firmly in front of the figure barreling toward him. 

“Who are you?” Sirius demanded in an angry bellow. The shadow didn’t answer and instead ran directly into him in a tackle. Sirius grappled as they went flying into another steel wall, realizing in horror that he was clawing out skin, flaky and stiff from being burned. Pieces of it came off in his hands, creating a gory mess as Sirius fought against the attacker. 

Then, the shadow made a jerking movement and Sirius felt something slice into his side. 

\--

Lily unsubmerged, gasping for air and quickly pulling herself from the coolant tank. The water was beyond any imaginable cold and felt equivalent to being stabbed and burned all at once. Her teeth chattered as she moved for the third tank, the previous one lowering behind her. As it locked into place, the lights blinked back on, shorting out every now and then. Lily let out a rickety sigh. 

She heard a familiar voice calling out for her thinly. 

“Two down,” she hissed shakily into the comm link, picking it up where she had abandoned it. Between the biting coolant and the scarce oxygen, she could barely breathe. “Two more and we’ll be operational. The mainframe is already rebooting itself, we’ll have some electrical functioning.” 

“What are you doing?” Remus demanded, frustrated with being trapped inside the airlock. He ripped part of the space suit out to form a tourniquet around his torso, adding pressure to the bleeding so he could move. But there was nowhere to go. 

“Told you,” Lily huffed, voice brittle with the cold. She reached the edge of the second coolant tank and stared at the blue water, looking innocuous and serene. “Manually lowering them.” 

Remus managed to cry out her name before she dropped the comm link again and lowered herself into the coolant in one shivering motion. 

\--

Sirius was bleeding. Whoever was attacking him had cut him deeply with something, and now he was clutching at his side as he stumbled down the halls again, aggressor still just behind him. Blood smeared against the walls where Sirius touched them and dropped in an ominous trail as he ran. The lights flashed strangely, signaling some kind of mainframe recognition and Sirius assumed it would mean the electricity would work again. Desperately, he looked for a barrier. 

The entrance to sector five was up ahead. The sector that housed their deadly payload. 

With a new burst of energy, Sirius shot toward the entrance, practically throwing himself past the doorway to furiously type the code to shut it. Blood messily streaked the keypad so Sirius’ fingers slipped, but he managed to get the door to obediently slide shut just as the figure fell against it. Sirius stared through the little window as the other straightened up, the ship’s lights casting more visibility. 

“Who --” he nearly reeled back in shock, the peeling, burnt face blistering with loathing as it stared back at him. The look of it was revolting and unreal, barely human so that Sirius had to push past the deformation to find anything recognizable. The eyes, bloodshot as they were, bore into his with such an intense sharpness, cruelty and hatred giving them a type of cold violence. He knew that stare, had listened to James toss theories about its owner on endless, lazy nights. The breath rushed out of his lungs as his bones seized with terror. “ _Riddle?_ ” 

Riddle continued to seethe and began examining the door. 

With startling anxiety, Sirius remembered there was a manual latch on the other side just as Riddle reached for it. Swearing spectacularly, Sirius broke away and ran from the door into where the nuclear payload waited. 

\--

The wait between the moment he heard Lily submerge herself and the distant gasp of breath signaling her reappearance felt like ages. Remus leaned against the wall of the airlock, ignoring the stain his blood left behind from where it had soaked his hands. The lights were back on, but the air was thinning drastically as a sign that the oxygen was nearly depleted. He focused on a point on the wall, determined to make his head stop spinning from the air, and attempted to think of a way out. 

The airlock was safer, Remus knew, but only because Riddle was busying himself with Sirius and Lily. Since the latter was occupied, Remus’ head buzzed with all the possibilities of what Riddle was doing to Sirius, or if he was already dead. The desire to get out of the airlock seared through him every time he pictured Riddle approaching Sirius, the same horrible look in his eyes directed at him. 

He wondered if the mission would be completed now or if Riddle would get his wish in controlling the destiny of the earth. Riddle seemed unconcerned with his own humanity and its degraded state, or even with the death he would inevitably face once everyone was dead. But to be the last man alive out of an entire species was yet another form of immortality, allowing Riddle that last infamy before he died out as well. 

The thought disgusted Remus, but no doubt intoxicated Riddle. 

To reach beyond mortality into the realm of glorious divinity meant dissolution even as it meant rising. A loss of humanity, Remus mused, was of course the price to pay for immortality. To be human meant to be mortal, for the scrabbling to survive was what lent them humanity in the first place. 

That instinct flared up in Remus now, the determination to live and save the others making it easy to ignore his bleeding wound and the sluggish feeling oxygen deprivation invoked. He straightened off the wall and glanced around again for something to use. 

“R-Remus,” Lily stuttered breathlessly into the comm link. She sounded frail and crumbling and Remus could practically hear her shivers as she spoke. “I only h-h-have o-one more le-left,” she sucked in a breath as if steeling herself. At the sound of it, so small and trembling, Remus realized she was going to die. 

He searched the airlock, tearing the space suit off the wall. 

“Y-you have to m-manually decouple the p-p-payload,” she stammered uncontrollably, breathing harsh and frigid. “Fly it d-directly into the sun. Remus --” 

His heart felt like it had stopped, hanging in the oxygen-deprived air alongside Lily’s words and the reality of their situation. Not just Lily, but all of them. They were all just marked graves, perhaps the moment they stepped foot on Icarus II. 

“Remus,” Lily gasped. “Finish the mission.” 

While their deaths were certain, there was still a world of lives that waited. Remus imagined a coin spinning through the air, flashing heads or tails as it came down slowly and he had the power to reach out and snatch it from its journey, cheating the game and determining the result. Not like the god Riddle thought himself to be, not controlling the outcome but perhaps just manipulating it, doing all that he can to ensure the odds fell in their favor. His conversation with her flitted to his memory again. She thought he deserved the responsibility. 

“Lily…” he spoke finally and stood in the middle of the airlock with most of the contents strewn about uselessly. “I can’t get out of the airlock, I’m trapped.” 

“Find a way,” she said firmly. “Don’t you dare give up, R-Remus. Deliver the p-payload, that’s an order.” 

The corner of his mouth twitched up in the beginnings of a sad smile. “Okay, Captain.” 

There was a huff that could have been a laugh, and then Remus could hear Lily moving away and the splash of water as she entered the last coolant tank. 

Unable to bear waiting for her to resurface and surging with sudden rage, Remus let out a roar and slammed against the airlock door. Pain burst where Riddle had sliced through him, and Remus let out an undignified grunt. Wildly, he darted his eyes around the room one last time, possible situations flitting like calculations behind his eyes with each object that lay discarded on the floor. 

Half hidden under the wilted space suit was a blowtorch. Remus launched forward to snatch it up and barely paused before he was igniting it and pressing the flame against the door. It took several minutes, with Lily’s silence an ominous sign he tried to ignore. The thoughts were shuttered to the back of his mind as Remus closed off everything but the sheer determination that kept him standing. 

The oxygen in the room began to wane even quicker from the fire, but Remus dismissed it and sucked in short, measured breaths until the metal of the door began to bubble and melt away. When there was a hole big enough, Remus snaked his arm through and felt around for the manual lock to push it back. 

As it slid open silently, Remus stood there, framed by the doorway between the pristine brightness of the EVA room and the flickering, dim hallway. He clenched the comm link in his hand, Lily still silent on the other end. 

“I don’t think it’s about deserving the heroic responsibility,” he said and didn’t wait for an answer. “I think it’s about earning it. The way James earned it even as he gave it up, sacrificing himself. And same goes for Alice, and Frank. Peter… Peter didn’t because he was selfish in the end. I can’t blame him because that’s human instinct, to survive. But Lily, I promise to earn it. I won’t go mad with it like Riddle, and I’ll save them if I can.” 

He dropped the comm link on the ground and moved quickly, darting down the hall toward the payload even as he ached to search for Sirius instead. Lily’s last words echoed in his mind with every pounding step he took and Remus could not bring himself to act so self-serving by finding Sirius instead of decoupling the payload. 

This was meant to be his sole purpose for the mission: set off the nuclear payload and save the world, not fall in love with the navigator. It was never meant to be a love story, but a tragedy, and kissing Sirius senselessly under the rays of the sun did not change that. 

So Remus continued to run, ignoring the breathless stitch in his side, ignoring the soaking wound, ignoring the demanding grief of Lily’s death piled on the rest, ignoring the screaming urge to stop and check every corner for Sirius, dead or alive, just so he could make sure… 

Then all the thoughts shattered from his head. There was blood leading a gruesome trail like a taunting trail he was too frightened to see the end of. He moved forward more slowly, swallowing around the thickness in his throat when he saw the blood anointing itself across the wall and doorway, which was slightly mangled as if it had been forced through. For all his talk about the probability of their deaths, Remus could not prepare himself for the likeliness of Sirius’ body lying prone at the end of the trail. 

The hallway to the fifth sector was still dark, despite the restoration of the ship’s lights. Remus walked carefully and tried to muffle his quickening footsteps. 

An arm shot out and pulled him back, smoothly closing another hand over his mouth to stifle his surprised yelp. 

“Where’s Lily?” Sirius’ voice brushed against his ear, barely audible. The sound of it unclenched Remus’ stomach and he shook his head, wrestling from Sirius’ grip to face him. 

“We have to manually decouple the bomb,” Remus said instead, letting the tone of his voice answer the question. There were no other thoughts that could be afforded to think right now, even the surging relief he felt at Sirius’ presence. He watched as Sirius blanched in pain at his omission about Lily before visibly steeling himself and pushing away his clear anguish.

Sirius nodded in understanding and cupped a hand at Remus’ sweaty jaw to dart a kiss against the line of his mouth. Like an electric shock, the relief snapped through Remus that Sirius was alive, and that even though they would likely die within minutes, he was here now, and Remus was not alone. He would not have to shoulder this by himself anymore. 

“Riddle’s in here somewhere,” Sirius murmured after Remus had thoroughly kissed him. He pulled back and darted his eyes over Remus’ shoulder. 

“We should get to the payload before he sabotages it,” said Remus. He skirted his hands down Sirius’ sides, brushing at the wound Riddle had given him. When Sirius flinched, Remus drew his hands away with a frown. 

“Just a scratch,” Sirius winked. “C’mon.” 

There was another door between them and the inside of the payload, and both tried not to stagger as they went down the hall. At the entrance, Remus wavered over the keypad that would decouple the payload from Icarus II. His fingers flexed, trying to think. 

“I’m going with you,” Sirius said quietly from over his shoulder. His tone smoldered in a low anger and when Remus looked up, there was the familiar frustration of regret shining in his eyes. Sirius had been forced to leave James behind, but he would not do the same now with Remus. They stared intently at each other until Remus nodded and keyed the code that would launch the payload into the sun with them aboard. 

The words lit up over the keypad, confirming their decision: _Payload Decoupling_. 

Sirius reached to lace his fingers with Remus’ and the pair stepped over the threshold into the payload, door sealing shut behind them like a death sentence. 

They hadn’t gotten far in the open space of the room before there was a guttural snarl and they were broken apart as Riddle attacked Sirius. Swearing colorfully, Sirius scraped at him, trying to block attacks of the scalpel Riddle was still yielding. Remus lurched to try and shove Riddle away. There was a confusing moment as they struggled, with the entire payload rumbling and quaking as it was decoupled from the ship, and Remus was knocked to the ground entirely, new pain flaring up from his stab wound. 

Sirius shouted, “Go! Active the payload!” but Remus faltered. Riddle’s gruesome form made for a nightmarish sight battling against Sirius, bleeding and weary as he was. Still, Sirius managed to hold his own, dodging the scalpel and getting his own blows in intermittently. 

“No one will have the power but me!” Riddle was screaming. “I alone am powerful enough to control it! To control _everything!_ ” 

Riddle struck a blow that had Sirius sprawling, and whipped around to Remus, eyes menacing and deadly. 

“You are only _human_ ,” Riddle bellowed, starting forward. “I am more!” 

He didn’t get far before Sirius was jumping on his back with a wild cry. 

“Remus! Go! Do it!” 

This time he turned and ran, making a beeline for the stairs that led to the catwalk. The control center was there, held high above the ground and waiting as Remus scrambled for it. He crossed the catwalk at full speed, footsteps pounding metallically over Riddle’s yelling. 

The code was ingrained into his head and it only took one try for Remus to get it right. He pressed the button to activate the payload and whirled around in time to see Sirius wrestle the scalpel away and stab Riddle with it, the latter screaming more in frustration than pain as he was momentarily hindered. 

Sirius glanced up at Remus. The beginning of a smile was at the edges of his lips when the bomb detonated.

Light exploded through the air and the yawning darkness instantly began to brim with incandescent particles as the star burst alive and eager. The shine was everywhere, scorching through the space and filling it so it spilled over and Remus thought he could feel it enter him; not burning but still there, like an extension of himself. He kept his eyes open and refused to blink lest he miss even a millisecond of the massive brightness that stretched wide and endless. 

As he soaked in the impossibility, his eyes caught Sirius, a few yards away and suddenly Remus knew the simmering of the light entering him was familiar. It was the same electric dipped feeling Sirius gave him, blooming in light-soaked bursts. Standing in the birth of a star, it was perhaps the closest to god any human would be, and it was a touch of the divinity Remus had been experiencing all along, not as a deity but as a person who loved. They may be made of starstuff but they would never be star. It was strangely and startlingly obvious to him. 

The stars were never alive. They lived and died, but they never breathed or touched or loved or fucked. They weren’t sentient beings with aches in their hearts begging for the simplest brush of the hands. He and Sirius and everyone else would die as they were: utterly human. And that would be the end of them and that would be their glory all at once. The stars would never love or sacrifice, only burn and burn themselves out, lonely in the sea of space while other stars look on from a distance. But humans would forever reach out and clasp hands for that last contact before death. 

Stars were always dead and living at once, but humans can only do one at a time, and Remus was no longer ashamed or scared or confused. Riddle was right: he _was_ human, not godly or celestial. He couldn't control anything, not even the beating of his heart, which pounded a rhythm chosen for him. He could only hope that it matched Sirius’, and was glad that it would be over, that he could die as he was meant to. As a human instead of a cold, deathless star, a gloriously and imperfectly human until the end, forever confused and brittle and snarling. And this time, the star being born would take itself from _him_. Remus giving back his body and all its chemical contents so that this time, the second time, the star could say it was made of humanstuff. And it would feel powerful. 

The infinity of human mortality looped on and on as time and space collided like a hungry kiss, devouring each other while Remus and Sirius died, not as gods, but as the shared heartbeat of the new sun booming into existence. 

Sirius stretched his mouth wide to grin at him and Remus found he was already grinning back, feeling whole and expansive and brilliant as the star swallowed him lovingly.

**Author's Note:**

> [obligatory apology]


End file.
